Auto Portrait / Self Portrait Post Partum

Why are Louise Bourque’s films
So moving
Why do they split open
The heart, the skin, the eyes
Small cracks of light
That flood and unsettle the steady rhythm
Of our personal machines
The rhythm panics, the house trembles
The foundations are overtaken
By the creatures that once swarmed
Our childhood bedrooms

A woman cries in the cinema
On-screen, a woman cries
In the cinema
Tears of light,
Crossed as well
By memories of buried loves
Avoid avoid avoid
The broken memories

Every day
Women cry
In the cinema
Where do
All these tears that women shed go

Shining tears
Extinguish the fires
That flare in our chests
When the heart’s machine
Panics, breaks, and bursts into flame

Love is the only remedy
And the only poison
Forever
We sink into it
Forever
Blue, red, black
Radiate beneath our eyelids
And invent
The wounded memories
Of women
Who are not me
And whom I wish
To hold in my arms
Out of love
For their shining tears
And their wildfire hearts

Naomie Décarie-Daigneault
Tënk Artistic Director